About James Isherwood

James Isherwood lives and works in New York City, but his paintings are filled with architectural dwellings sourced from elsewhere. In a commentary on luxury real estate, Isherwood has painted uninhabited residences imagined as spaces for retreat and social gathering; yet in their absence of humans they explore changes in global economic status, as well as ideas of reflection, calm, and hibernation in places of idealized retreat. In recent work, Isherwood has represented generic images of barns that combine formal abstract painting with drawing, and focus on the interaction of geometry, color, and texture—the latter achieved in as many as 100 layers on a single painting in a process of layering, sanding, and imprinting objects. The simplicity of the colors and forms in these structures highlights their changing appearance and creates space for Isherwood's imagined realities.

American, b. 1971, Fall River, Massachusetts, based in New York, New York